San Chico

So I am finally in my site and the town is as small as I had been told. However the Alcaldia has a decidedly large town feel considering how large the municipio is. I mean the town itself is about a quarter of the size of Santo Domingo, but municipio is one of the larger ones in the department and the Alcaldia employs more than 5 times as many people as the one in Santo Domingo. I´ve already been provided with a desk and it is only my second day of my site visit, I don´t even live here yet.

That leads me to my second point, housing might be interesting for a while. Since the town is so small there don´t seem to be many houses on the market. There is a nice gentleman that seems to be friends or possibly a coworker of my counterpart in some capacity that owns two large houses. Quite frankly I was looking to rent a small house all to myself, not a large room in a huge house with a shared bathroom. For now I have asked just about everyone who works at the Alcaldia and actually lives in town to think if they know of anything. I am supposed to see another house sometime today, I´m hoping it is my dream house. If not the front casita part of the huge house will become available mere days after I return here, and that is better than just a room in the house.

The trip out here was interesting. I crashed in San Sal the night before in hopes of simplifying the trip and shortening my travel time. It seems I succeeded in shortening travel time, but not simplifying the trip. I asked the cobrador on my bus to tell me when to get off for the western terminal, he asked me where I was going, I told him, then he told me to get off at a different spot which had the same bus. Sounds like he did me a favor, but I was supposed to meet someone at the terminal, so I had to get another bus back. This time the cobrador ignored my request entirely and I spotted the terminal on my own one stop too late, and wound up walking back to the terminal. Not fun with a big overnight bag on your back. But I met up with Stephen and we took all the necessary busses without further complication.

Right now I am sitting in the only internet cafe in my town and it has dial-up internet. I haven´t used dial up in some time, but I think I may need to get used to it. That or get used to traveling a little bit to use some faster internet. I am here because my counterpart isn´t in the office today and I am supposed to go see a house and a go to a meeting in the afternoon, but have nothing to do right now until lunch.